Broken House, Broken Doll
by angel-dawes
Summary: When he wakes up, something is different. He's broken. And it's the little things that fix him, that make him whole again. ImprintPaul-centric. Paul/Echo, Tony/Priya, Adele/Dominic. Spoilers through the end.
1. Chapter 1

Spoilers up to the end of the series (based on promo pictures).

This is basically just a look from Paul's perspective about the events that follow his being imprinted with his own personality. I'm going to take it all the way up to the end in probably 4 or 5 chapters at the most.

* * *

Prologue - Did I Fall Asleep?

He's broken. It's hard to wrap his head around. And it's the little things that fix him, that make him whole again.

He has all his memories. (At least, he _thinks _they're his memories). His first kiss with Christy Lawrence, his first school dance with her sister. He remembers the time he broke his arm trying to show off to the bigger kids down the street. He remembers the way the blood felt trickling down his arm, and he remembers the way it felt to see his wife standing in front of him with divorce papers clutched in her hand. And then receiving that picture of Caroline for the first time, in that simple manila envelope with a scrawling black "Paul Ballard" on the front. He remembers looking at that picture and knowing that the Dollhouse was real, knowing that he had to _save _her. He remembers Mellie, and how soft her skin felt (how _real_, how unlike his fantasies of Caroline, of saving her and loving her). He remembers the way Mellie's eyes had looked so apologetic when she announced, unbeknownst to her (to her _imprint_), that she was a Doll, designed to be his perfect woman, the perfect foil to his best laid plans.

Most clear, though, are his memories of Echo. Not _Caroline_, not the grinning girl in the picture or on the computer screen with the big dreams and the spunky attitude, but Echo, the doll. The person, the _people. _Those are the memories that he treasured most dearly, back when he was still a person and not an _imprint_; not a computer program installed in his damaged, burnt-out husk of a brain. He has a vivid memory of catching the metal wedge that contained Caroline's personality when it fell from Echo's hands, and he remembers locking eyes with her as she whispered, "You saved her." He had never felt so strong, so _worthy._

He remembers every perfect detail of living with her for three months, trying his hardest to pretend that he didn't love her just as much as she claimed to love him. He remembers most painfully the way she kissed him on their last day, and the disappointment and hurt that was in her eyes when he finally managed to push her lips from his. He remembers her snide, "I try to be my best", and the way Boyd walked in and looked at him, like he _knew_. Like he was trying to _warn _Paul to stay away from her. As if Paul hadn't been screwing _that_ up just fine on his own.

His last memory is of Alpha's face grinning at him as the electricity fries his brain. He remembers the pain, and he remembers willing his body to fight it. Because Echo could survive on her own, he knew that. She was strong, and she was brave. But he didn't want her to. He loved her. Why would he want her to face _anything _alone?

After that, he woke up different. Topher has apologized what feels like thirty thousand times, but it's not enough. How could it ever be enough? He lost his job, his _life_ to the Dollhouse, trying to fight them. And now he's not only working for them, but he's _one _of them, too. One step out of line, and they can wipe him. Just like that, he can be gone forever. Imprinted with someone who won't be quite so testy (he can tell that Adele wants to do it, judging from the way she looks at him when he first confronts her in her office).

And something else is different, too.

He can't figure it out, at first, but something about him has been drastically changed from how it was before. It's strange, and confusing, and he doesn't know what it is, but he knows it's bad. Topher keeps looking at him like he's convinced Paul's going to stab him, and Adele has been smirking whenever she thinks Paul isn't looking. Even that new girl who's helping Topher put Caroline's personality wedge back together after someone (Echo? Alpha?) destroyed it, Bennett, she keeps whispering to Topher when Paul's in the room, and acting like she can't see him. Topher keeps saying that she's just a little eccentric, but he can barely look Paul in the eye when he says it. And Boyd? Boyd seems to be hiding out somewhere until someone _else_ can tell Paul exactly what's going on. Not the most _admirable_ approach, but it's working.

Finally, _finally_, Echo asks him to sit down. They're in Dr. Saunders' office while the doctor in question is going to see Topher to finish stitching up his cut (as it turns out, she's heading up the stairs to shoot Bennett in the head, but that's not for another five minutes). Paul feels exposed, reclining in the comfortable chair. Sort of like how he felt when he was in the _other _chair, being tortured to brain death by the psychotic jackasses who made up Alpha.

"It's because I'm an imprint, right?" he says.

"No."

"I don't _feel _anything anymore, except angry. I _remember_ feeling things, but I can't remember what they felt like."

"Imprints can feel. _You _can feel. You can even _love_, but you can't love me."

He feels a cold chill snake down his spine and asks, "What?"

"Topher had to reroute your brain. It was the only way to wake you up. And when that happened, he needed the paths that were, as he said, the brightest. The neural pathways through your brain that let you feel a connection to me, a passion, those are used now to control your motor functions. Something a little more essential, you have to admit."

"He took away my _love _for you? That's impossible."

"Is it? You already said that you don't know me anymore. You have all your memories. You even remember _me_, but in another very _real _sense, you don't know me at all. You don't remember what we had, what we shared. You can't remember what you felt. It's science."

"It's crap."

"Whatever you call it, it's irreversible. I'm sorry."

"How can you be so calm about this?"

"I'm furious, Paul. I'm hurt, and I'm furious. But Topher was right to do what he did. We _need _you. _I _need you. This war that's coming, it's going to be big, and a lot of people are going to get hurt. We need every soldier we can get on our side, and you're more than just some soldier. Would I prefer that we still shared something? Yes. Is it possible? No. I'll learn to live with it, and so will you."

"How am I supposed to deal with this?"

"We still have work to do, and I know you care about that. And you have Madeline, now. Focus on saving her, doing this for _her_. You love her."

"I loved _Mellie_, but she's not real. Just because she's Mellie now, it doesn't mean she's going to be Mellie forever. She's a _person_. Madeline. She deserves to be back in her body. Mellie is just Adele's sick way of getting between us. Mellie isn't real."

Echo looks at him and whispers, "Neither are you."


	2. Chapter 2

I loved the Dollhouse finale, but I thought that there were things that could have been explained better. This story was originally supposed to happen entirely in the two weeks between 2x12 and 2x13, but due to a computer malfunction I lost the remainder of the story, so I decided to redo it as a sort of filler to explain certain things and possibly fix things that bothered me about the show's ending. It will still be somewhere between 4 and 5 chapters.

* * *

Chapter 1

They thought they saved the world, when they returned from Tuscon. They sat in Adele's office with bottles of champagne and guns in their hands. They were prepared for whatever would be thrown their way. They were prepared to defend the Dollhouse at whatever cost.

But nothing happens.

Rossum doesn't send men to apprehend them. They don't order Adele to keep sending out actives under penalty of death. Adele never sees a single complaint in a single e-mail. She doesn't even _get_ e-mails anymore.

For all intents and purposes, they don't exist any longer. The building above them runs just as smoothly as it ever has. Adele still functions as their boss, their head of operations, but there are no more operations for her to be the head of.

Paul knows that the only thing worse than people actively trying to kill them is the anticipation that builds as he stands in the Dollhouse beside Echo and wonders what they're supposed to do now. They're a team of world-defending fighters without a purpose. They're all afraid to try and start lives outside, because they all believe that Rossum is just lying in wait for them to let down their guard.

"We can't do this forever," Echo says quietly. She's looking at Tony and Priya, who are talking in the center of the main floor, their hushed whispers not carrying to the upper level.

"Can't do what?"

"Wait. Anticipate. Rossum _wants_ us to do something, we just don't know _what_. We need to get one step ahead if we're going to win this war. We cut the head off the snake, but it's going to grow back if we don't torch the body."

"I don't think this metaphor's working anymore."

Echo shrugs, grins a little.

"I don't know, I kind of like it," she admits. "Not exactly realistic, but since when is any of this realistic anyway?"

"Point taken. What do you think we should do?"

Echo is silent, then, obviously trying to figure out exactly how to respond to his question. That, of course, means that it's something he's not going to like. He can think of a few things that could mean. But when she _does _speak, he's surprised to find out that it's something right up his figurative alley.

"I think that we need to keep fighting. Need to keep taking down the houses one at a time."

"You'll get no argument from me."

"I thought you'd want us to stay here, stay safe."

"That's what _Adele_ wants. I only agree with her because she has the power to wipe me."

Echo chuckles and folds her arms on the railing in front of them. Paul does the same, examining the features of the woman he used to love before a sweater-vest-wearing manchild genius took that away.

"So you'd be willing to come with me? You'd be willing to risk it?"

"I have nothing to lose, Echo," Paul says quietly. Echo puts her hand over his, and for a moment there is a spark of recognition in his brain. Something that remembers the way she put her hand on his during their last night in the apartment together, when she had tried unsuccessfully for the thousandth time to get him to compromise his morals to sleep with her.

He remembers feeling like maybe that time was the time she'd be successful, but he'd triumphed over his instincts in the end. Something that he wasn't sure he would be able to do. She'd used the words _aggressively sexual_, after all. Normally, that meant it was fair game. But he'd resisted, and he'd gone to sleep that night thinking that he was an idiot.

And now here he was, thinking the same thing. He's willing to go to hell for this woman, and he doesn't even love her anymore. He just knows that he _should_, and he _used to_. And maybe, maybe he _will_, once his brain figures out how to do it again.

"Randolph and Ambrose will have backups somewhere, backups that will know what we've done. Boyd, I'm not sure about, but I wouldn't discount the idea entirely. I wouldn't be surprised if their architecture was rigged as a recording device, record everything that's going on and download it straight to the computer so that the next time they have to use a body, they have everything there. Everything up until the last moment of life. Topher said it was possible, that the tech is out there, but there's never been a use for it because Rossum never used to offer this kind of service. Topher thought it was even beyond _their _moral depths. I think when he invented it, he was thinking of a crime-solving thing. Only to be used if someone was murdered and we needed to know the truth."

"Topher thinks he's a comic book hero," Paul says.

"Yeah, well, now he thinks he's the villain," Echo sighs, quiet and contemplative. Paul glances over at her, frowning.

"Isn't he? At least a little? Topher, Adele, they're on our side _now_, but if not for them…"

"If not for them, it would have taken maybe ten years for the tech to develop," Echo admits quietly. "But then we wouldn't be here to stop it. Maybe it's not fair, but the world needs us. We should be grateful we're in a position to do something about it."

Paul sighs and shakes his head, grinning.

"Is that Caroline talking?" he asks. Echo's face breaks into a genuine smile.

"A little," she admits. "I didn't think you'd catch that."

"How does that work, anyway? Does she just overwhelm you sometimes, say what's on her mind?"

"Caroline and I are the same person. You were right when you said that. Bennett's memory was skewed _seriously _in her favor. I am Caroline, Caroline is me. But I can pull back from Caroline, a little, because I've evolved more highly than her. I have more references than she does. If I'm talking to Topher, I usually push Caroline to the on-deck circle and bring a few of the rocket scientists up to the plate. But Caroline always has a say. It's her body, after all."

"How does she feel about all this?"

"She's me, but with different memories. I can turn the memories off, if I want, but ultimately I'm still her, and she's still me. She is a part of the decision making process, too. I can turn them all off, send them back to the sidelines to watch the game. They others don't like it. They're people."

"Not real people, though."

"Caroline's real. Margaret Bashford is real. The others _think _they're real, and isn't that what matters? They all know what's going on, because being in my head adds a spin to it. I can control them. But only the ones that Topher constructed. I can see the seams where he fused personalities together. I can talk to individual facets of their personalities, figure out who used to be who. But Caroline and Margaret, they're _real people_. I can't control them. The most I can do is push them to the back of my mind for a while. Margaret isn't fond of it, but she's also sort of a bitch, so Caroline and I don't feel too guilty about it."

"How do I even know _I'm _real? That Topher didn't screw around with my memories, give me new ones?"

"Why? You got a male-on-male experience or two that you suspect was put there by a juvenile genius?" Echo asks, a smile playing at her lips again.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly be surprised, but no. Everything _feels_ real, but what if it's not?"

"Whatever's real to you, Paul, _that's_ real."

"But it's not real to you. I don't feel the things for you that I used to feel. But you still do, and you remember a time when I _did_. There can't be two things that are _real_. It doesn't work that way."

Echo smiles and says, "It kind of does."

Paul doesn't know how to argue that, so he doesn't. He just takes another sip of his beer and wishes that he had never heard of the Dollhouse. But when Echo puts his hand on hers again, he doesn't move it. He doesn't even _want _to.

* * *

Topher spins in his chair, eyes glued to his computer screen.

"What's the problem?" Paul asks as he enters the room, crinkling his nose at the smell that hits him as soon as he opens the door. "And the smell?"

"The problem is big. And the smell, you can get over. I'm busy trying to save us all. Saviors don't just get a day off to take a shower."

"Five minutes won't kill us," Paul argues. Topher stops spinning and looks over his shoulder, very serious.

"It kind of might," he says.

"What? What did you find?"

"I hacked into the D.C. Dollhouse's server using our doggie door, except then I had to work my way through the firewalls that Bennett set up for Lipman's computer, the one that would store all the super secret evil e-mails and memos."

"Did you get in?"

"Through much ingenious tampering that should not go without notice, yes. I did."

"And the evil e-mails? What did you find?"

"I found a lot," Topher says, his face falling as he descends once again into moroseness. Paul has noticed that his moods have been fluctuating sharply as of late. His normally grating manic personality has dissolved into quick bursts of ego-fueled energy, and Paul finds that he's missing the way it used to be constant.

"Don't rush to tell me or anything," he says impatiently to mask his concern. Topher sighs and clasps his hands together, eyes wide and haunted.

"Lipman's been corresponding with Ambrose, Harding, and a few of the other dollhouse heads. They haven't even mentioned us."

"So that's your big something? Nothing?"

"No. That's the nothing that prefaces the something: the reason they're not talking about us."

"Topher, I swear to God…"

"They're not talking about us because they're talking about something bigger, Paul. They're ready to go global with the tech that we destroyed."

"I thought you…"

"Destroyed it? Yeah. So did I. But I was talking to Echo, and we figured it out. Clyde. Clyde in Dr. Saunders' body. I've always had this theory that there was a way for the imprint to go wireless, to relay information to us that's more advanced than just the brain waves and the vital signs. You know, actual _data_. Sounds, sights, even smells, one day, once I figured out how to make that work. So if an active died in the field…"

"Right, Echo mentioned this a few weeks ago, right after we got back from Tuscon. Downloading people in real time from out in the field and into the chair. So you think that Clyde was hooked up wirelessly to some computer, and when Boyd told him what the problem was…"

"That information went straight to the hard drives. Yes. The thing is, we _destroyed_ those hard drives. But we didn't get them all. We didn't anticipate that Clyde could be backed up to another house in real time. We assumed that the other copies were all hard copies, but maybe they weren't. Maybe we didn't decapitate the snake, just cut most of it off so there's just a flap of skin holding it on."

"What is with you people and this snake metaphor," Paul grumbles, but Topher seems to understand that his frustration is directly related to his total feelings of helplessness. "What does this mean? Plain and simple. What does this mean for _us_?"

"It means we're frakked, new best man-friend. Just…frakked."

* * *

Adele waits a few months, until it's hopeless, before she orders the Attic to be emptied.

"And no one is to leave this house, understand?" she tells Echo and Paul. Topher is standing behind them, breathing heavily and looking around with wide, practically unseeing eyes.

"We can't keep people from leaving. Especially not after what you put them through up there. If they want to leave…"

"Fine. They can leave if they must, but Caroline you must be sure you impress upon them the gravity of this situation. Life above ground has never been for the faint of heart, and these people came to us because they could not deal with the consequences of whatever life up there meant to them. I believe it's safe to say that things have only gotten worse since they saw it last."

"Half of them were prisoners," Topher puts in. "Prison inmates like Alpha. Not quite so…Alpha, but still. The inmate experiment was, as a whole, pretty much an epic failure. What are we supposed to do with them?"

"Mr. Ballard, I'm sure, will be more than happy to dispatch any threats to you or to anyone else who's in range and needs a white knight, Topher." She turns to go with an indulgent smile for her young employee, a smile that barely tries to hide the anxiety and tenderness behind it. "Oh, and Topher? Do send Mr. Dominic to my office once you've woken him. I wish to address him personally."

She strides to the elevator, missing the knowing expression that Echo gives Topher.

"She's sort of got the hots for Dom," Topher explains absently to Paul when he sees the confusion in his face.

"You know, like how if a boy pulls your hair, it means he likes you," Echo elaborates. "If a girl locks your consciousness in a manmade Hell, it means she wants you in the executive elevator, in a bad way."

"A lethal way," Topher supplies, grinning faintly. It's the first sign of a smile that he's shown in a week, and Paul can hear Echo's sigh of relief even though she tries to keep it quiet.

"That poor bastard," Paul says.

"Oh, he totally digs her in return," Topher replies.

"I think it's sort of how a deer will get stuck in headlights," Echo says as Topher finishes typing something into his keyboard and gets to his feet. "He's so fascinated by the lights that he fails to realize it could get him killed…"

"…until he's trapped in the attic, or, metaphorically, roadkill," Topher finishes.

Paul shakes his head at the both of them, although he can't hide the smile. There hasn't been much to joke about later. Talking about the old days, back when the Dollhouse was just one organization, small and manageable, and filled with mostly amoral people who could still be reasoned with, it almost feels like nostalgia.

* * *

That fades, and quickly. Dominic, as soon as he can get some clothes that don't look like something out of a bad pop video, heads upstairs with Paul's pistol to confront his former boss, and Topher paces nervously, descending into nervous rambling as he's been likely to do, lately.

"He'll be back in a little while," Echo says decisively when Topher strikes off down the hall, fleeing from the Attic like something's chasing him.

"Maybe physically. He can't take this, Echo. Every time he has a chance to stop and think about it…it's killing him."

"It's killing all of us."

"Right. Which makes it kill him more."

"Since when do you care about Topher? He's the one that imprinted you, remember? What happened to all that rage and fury? What happened to blaming him for Mellie's death? For the deaths of everyone?"

"You were right when you said that it would have happened eventually. And Caroline was right when she said I should be grateful. Because even though you remain a complete mystery to me most of the time, I at least know that I can trust your judgment. And I know that you feel responsible, too. You think that you should have done more when we had the chance. Which, by the way, is crap. You did everything you knew how to do. This was _always_ bigger than us. Now, all we can do is hope that something goes our way."

"People are being wiped out there, being printed with _other_ people. This wasn't supposed to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to happen this _fast_. And there's nothing we can do to help them."

Echo is rapidly descending into one of her horribly pessimistic moods, so Paul puts his hands on her shoulders and faces her with determination.

"We're going to do everything we can, and then some. Just like we always do. And we're going to do it together."

She looks up at him with her lips twitching into something like a smile, and her hand comes up to cup his cheek. He isn't surprised when his heart thuds painfully in his chest, but he can't tell if it's love or just the pain that comes with the absence of it that he knows should be there. Like an amputee who still feels a limb that's gone.

Or, in this case, a limb that's slowly and torturously starting to grow back.

"I hope you still feel that way after I tell you my next idea," Echo says, her hand still feather-light against his skin. Paul sighs and looks down at the ground between their feet.

"What's your next idea?" he asks, unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face. Her next words, however, wipe the grin completely.

"We need to find Alpha. And, before you ask, yes. I'm serious."


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you for reading, everyone! My science gets a little weird in this chapter, but they never said that this ISN'T what happens inside the heads of Alpha and Echo, so I'm sticking with it.

* * *

Chapter 2

"She wants to find _Alpha_," Paul mutters to Topher the following day as he sits down in the chair that Ivy used to routinely occupy. He completely recognizes the absurdity of the fact that he's going to _Topher_ for someone to talk to, but he doesn't have many options. He doesn't have many friends. And, as much as he hates to admit it, Topher is probably the closest thing to a friend that he has. Craziness and all.

"Of course," Topher says, like this is a fucking _revelation_ and not a monumentally bad idea. "If _anyone_ can figure out a way to keep us from getting wiped, it's him."

"What do you mean?"

It's one of Topher's good days. There have been fewer, lately. Most of the time he doesn't even come out of that back room where he sleeps. Most of the time he just stays there, huddled under his blankets, and tries to figure out how to fix the world. Today there's a spark of the condescending, affably amoral man who used to annoy the shit out of Paul on a daily basis. Given the choice between the two of them, Paul chooses this.

"Well, the dude's a freak show, Ballard. His composite event was just the start. Or, well, it was sort of in the middle, but it was the start of the _really_ messed up stuff. He's evolving, just like Echo."

"Yeah, except he's a psychotic."

"And Echo isn't? Maybe you're blinded by love goggles, but she's got the personalities of some seriously messed up individuals knocking around inside her head. One tiny step into the realm of the hypothetical, and she could start blasting us all away without a moral quandary in the world."

"She wouldn't do that. She's not like him."

"Whatever you say, Ballard. Just don't come crying to me when she turns on us, because I'll probably be the first one dead. If she doesn't go after you, first."

Paul scoffs and turns to go, but something stops him. He knows it's likely that Topher might not have the answers that he's looking for, but it's worth asking. Besides, he has to take advantages of days like this.

"How are we supposed to get Alpha to help us? How could she popssibly think this is going to work?"

He doesn't want to consider the possibility that she might be losing it, but then again, they're _all _losing it.

And then Topher looks at him, and there's something in that look that tells him there's more to this than anyone has mentioned so far. He almost groans aloud.

"What?" he asks. "What could you possibly have to tell me that will fuck up my life even more?"

Topher sighs and says, "Don't be mad, but with all the stuff that happened, we didn't _really_ get the chance to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"The reason we had an imprint on hand of you."

"What do you mean?"

"You never went through scans, you never got backed up, but we could imprint you with your own personality anyway? Come on, even _you _have to know something was up with that." He waits for a reaction, but upon getting none he sighs and keeps talking. "Look…after Alpha wiped you, I was able to recreate your brain patterns thanks to the info stored on the harddrive, but…"

"But _what_?"

"Well, you already know you're not really _you_, per se, so I don't think this should be _too _much of a shock…"

Paul feels his blood run cold as he suddenly understands what Topher is too afraid to tell him.

"Alpha. He imprinted himself with me. I'm in Alpha's head? The original me, the one that Alpha wiped, the one before you messed around with my brain, he's in there?"

"Palling around with the whole crew, yeah. And probably not having a good time. Although, who knows, your shared love of a certain brunette might be enough to get the boys singing kumbaya around the campfire…"

"This isn't funny, Topher."

The programmer sobers instantly.

"I know it isn't."

"She thinks that I can convince him to help?"

"I think she's convinced that you can make him a better person. He took over, you know."

"What?"

"_You_. You took over. The you inside Alpha's head, he pushed those other guys out for just long enough to talk to Echo. I don't think you _quite_ understand how big that is. I mean, I knew you were annoying, but…this is just unprecedented."

"What do you mean?"

"Try and keep up. Those personalities in Alpha's head, they're all their own selves with their own individual thoughts and ideas, but they're all _linked_, in a way, to the central command. That's Alpha. He's like the administrator of a computer network, okay? Is that simple enough for you? All the personalities that I created for him, they're all malleable. He can twist them and contort them and convince them that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. My work is good, it's the best, but it isn't seamless. It isn't _perfect_. So he can see those lines where I put these personalities together, and he uses those seams in order to get in there and scramble them around a little. Confuse them, change them. The shapes remain intact, but the gooey insides get a little questionable. So do you get what that means? The dude has an _army_ in his head. For realsies, an army that he is in complete control of. But you? He can't control you, because that imprint is the real deal. Paul Ballard, unabridged. Your _soul_, to take a humorous term from you. That imprint, that original _you_, he went up against an army of more than forty people, and he _won_. He won for just long enough to get a message to the woman he was creepily obsessed with. He _did that_. You, _you_ did that. Do you even know how _huge_ that is?"

Topher is starting to get flushed with excitement, a bit of his old spark returning to his eyes as he gazes at Paul's concerned face. Paul averts his stare and looks instead down at the main floor where Echo is standing, talking to Dominic with her arms folded across her chest.

"The wedge with my imprint, what happened to it?"

"Alpha destroyed it."

"Why?"

"You're asking me to rationalize the actions of a crazy person."

Paul almost reminds Topher that _he _was the one who made Alpha crazy, but something stops him. Topher doesn't need any more guilt trips. The guilt is eating away at him as it is. There's no need to make it worse.

"Right," he says instead, getting to his feet. "Okay."

He leaves the room before Topher can say anything else.

* * *

They're sitting across from one another in one of the sleeping pods, knees bent up in front of them like spears erected to keep out an army as they stare across the space that seems cavernous.

"Were you going to tell me?" he asks finally. She nods.

"Yes. Of course."

He looks down at his hands, rocked briefly by a wave of nausea as he considers the fact that they're not _really_ his hands. They really belong to a man who's currently probably terrified out of his mind (a phrase that makes him feel even _more _nauseas), locked in the most fucked-up prison in history.

"What's it like in there?" he asks. "For Caroline and Margaret? The real personalities?"

She understands. Of course she does. When she speaks, her voice is low and gentle, like he's someone who needs to be talked down from the edge, or a wild dog being coaxed from attack.

"I keep it nice. It's my mind, so I can control it, a little. I can give them what they want. Margaret gets to be with her husband. Caroline gets to be with her boyfriend. I can make them see things, experience things. I've got a few schizophrenics in here who are…useful."

"Who do _you_ get to be with?"

"I don't need to be with anybody," Echo answers, straightforward, and Paul's not sure what she means by that, but he's too afraid to ask.

"But they're powerless. Helpless. You mentioned that Margaret doesn't like it."

"No. She doesn't. I'm thinking of taking her out."

"You can do that? Take out one imprint?"

"Topher can. He took out Terry Karrens a few weeks ago. I didn't like having him in here. He was harder to control than the others. How _was_ Topher today?"

"He's having a good day."

"That's two this week. That's better."

She's trying to change the subject.

"But it's not good in there for Margaret, is it?"

"No. Not for her. She's stubborn and used to being in control. In here, there's nothing. There's _no_ control. She can try and fight her way to the top, but I'm better at keeping them away, now. "

"So what I'm going through in Alpha's head…"

"Is probably worse. Yes."

He sighs and leans his head back against the sharp stone, watching the way she watches him with her eyes so filled with concern. He wonders if she still loves him, or if she doesn't love him anymore because he's not the man he used to be. He wonders if that would make her a hypocrite. He thinks it might.

He's surprised to realize that he's feeling a fair amount of anxiety over this. Over whether or not she still cares about him. Does that mean that he cares about _her_? That would seem to be the implication, but he's not sure. How can he be sure?

He watches her and wonders how he can be sure.

She slowly crawls across the space between them, her eyes never leaving his for an instant, like she's afraid that breaking eye contact will release him from her spell. Maybe it will. Who knows? He takes in a sharp breath and leans back further, as if the stone will yield behind him and let him escape to some other place where he doesn't have to deal with this on top of everything else.

He pushed her away last time because it wasn't his right. Caroline wasn't in there, and Caroline couldn't consent. But Caroline is in there, now, and he can tell from the wicked smile at the corners of her mouth that she's flying co-pilot if she isn't in control of the whole operation.

"Echo," he says, the word barely a murmur, barely a whisper. She keeps coming, eyes still locked on him. But instead of stopping, instead of kneeling in front of him and kissing him like he expects her to, she pulls him forward and snakes her arms around his neck. It's not meant to be sexual, not like it was on so many evenings during their three-month stay together when she would hug him and try to hint to him that she was all right with anything he wanted to try. It's not meant to be comforting for her, as if she needs _his _comfort when she has the comfort of her own superiority. It's meant to be comforting for _him_.

She pulls his face to her shoulder and grips his back with her fingers, nails digging through his thin t-shirt and into the flesh beneath. He feels her lips on the side of his head, and he feels every muscle in his body suddenly relax. The tension that has been building for weeks, it just _vanishes_.

The lights go out around them as Adele flips the switch for the night, and they're left in the darkness with only each other. And it doesn't have to become anything, because it's already something they both need. They lay there silently and slowly fall asleep, their arms wrapped around each other and their hearts beating in time, gradually slower until they both are gone.

* * *

When he wakes up, she's gone. And there's an absence that he feels that's not just physical. It's the absence of his wife's clothes in their shared closet, the absence of Mellie's footsteps in the hall every afternoon at four-thirty like clockwork. It's the absence of Echo's body against his as they both grappled for dominance every night for three months. It's an absence that isn't just about the lack of warmth where her head used to be. It's something else. Something stronger, sharper. Something that threatens to override Topher's programming. It feels a little like nausea, only emotional.

Emotional nausea.

He staggers out of the sleeping pod, rubbing a hand through his wayward hair and trying to figure out the tangled emotions that are swirling around in his head. He's dizzy, whether with exhaustion or with this mental reawakening, he doesn't know. He thinks he had a dream about her last night. It's the first time he's dreamed since that day with Alpha. He figures that has to be a good sign, even if he _did _dream she was dead. Again.

She's sitting on one of the couches on the main floor, a book open in her lap. When he walks into the open, she smiles at him and gestures to the seat beside her. He gratefully acquiesces, shuffling sleepily, sitting close.

"How did you sleep?" she asks in the disarming, doll-like way that always reminds him of what she is.

"Better than usual," he says, and he stops just short of admitting it's because of her. She smiles anyway, slipping a leaf between the pages of her book as a bookmark and pushing it closed.

"Good," she says carefully, and he knows she's about to say something that will make his good night of sleep seem completely wasted. "Because you're going to need your rest."

"You still want to go after Alpha, don't you?"

"Yes."

"You want us to leave today."

"Yes. Tonight. Under cover of darkness."

"We don't even know where he is."

"He'll be at the warehouse."

"We don't know that for sure, Echo."

"I do."

He sighs as he stares into her eyes, trying to detect even the barest hint of doubt there. He sees nothing. She believes fully that she's right. And maybe she is. He doesn't know. He just knows that he trusts her, and she counts on that.

He nods and says, "All right."

She smiles and squeezes his hand. Before he has the chance to squeeze back, she's gone, silently moving away.

He puts his head in his hands as she moves up the stairs. She's going to see Topher, probably. Topher and Adele. Possibly Dominic, who has been much more forgiving of Topher as of late, just like the rest of them.

He feels the couch depress gently beside him, and he glances up to see Priya perched gracefully on the edge of the seat.

"Hi," she says softly, and even though they've barely spoken (other than that time her bounty-hunter imprint took a shine to him), she's got this look in her eyes like they're old friends. Maybe they are. Maybe they're all old friends, by this point. There's nothing like the end of the world to bring people together, after all. And they're the elite few who actually _know _stuff. They're the elite few who have been grabbing people off the streets and bringing them down to safety, being their saviors, being their only hope.

"Hey," he says as casually as he can manage.

"I don't think it's true, you know. What they say."

"That I'm preachy and judgmental?"

Priya laughs, quiet and birdlike.

"No, I think that's probably a little true. I mean what they say about what Topher did to you. Echo says…Echo says you can't love her anymore. That they had to fix your brain, and in order to do that…"

She breaks off, and Paul nods so she won't have to finish. He doesn't need to hear this _again_.

"Yeah."

"Well, I don't think it's true."

Paul looks at her doubtfully, at her chin in the air and her hair tossed back defiantly. She has the look of a woman who knows she's right and will stop at nothing to defend her position. He's reminded briefly of Mellie when she insisted that she wasn't good enough to love, and he shoves that thought violently to the back of his mind.

"It is, though. I can't feel anything for her anymore. Not like I used to. Not like I remember. There are little things, little things she does that I can _maybe_ think are…"

He breaks off and shakes his head. No, no, Priya is wrong.

"Look at me and Tony," Priya whispers, glancing at the dark-haired man who is helping a nearby survivor carry a crate into one of the sleeping pod rooms. "They did everything they could to get rid of what we felt for each other, but it stayed all the same. Sierra and Victor fell in love with each other when there was nothing to fall in love with."

"Yeah, but I'm not _me_," Paul points out. "I'm an imprint. I'm brain damaged."

"Topher says our imprints used to fall in love," Priya replies, unfazed by his self-pitying statement. He suddenly likes her a lot more.

"Attraction is biological. It's not something you can take away from someone. That doesn't mean…"

"Doesn't mean love?" Priya asks when he fails to finish the sentence. He feels embarrassed, like he's been trying to give her relationship advice instead of just pointing out the obvious. She smiles a little and looks over at Tony.

"I know what Topher believes, and I believe he's right about almost everything, but I think he's wrong about this. This wasn't just _biology_. I saw him across this room, sitting right there, and I _knew_. I knew with everything in me that I _loved_ him. It wasn't like seeing a guy across a crowded bar and thinking he's _cute_, Paul. It's something more, something instinctive. And I know you feel that for Echo, somewhere. I know it will come back."

He smiles at her more because of the sentiment than because he actually believes it.

But when he looks up at the window to Topher's office and sees Echo staring down, his heart gives a painful lurch. Their eyes connect. They both smile.

And despite everything that he has believed since Topher woke him up like something out of a demented _Sleeping Beauty_ story, the instinctive thought races through his mind that: _it's only a matter of time_.


	4. Chapter 4

I think one more chapter following this one should wrap it up, although it might take two depending on what I decide to cover.

* * *

Chapter 4

Paul wakes up one morning to find Echo kneeling over him. It's strangely reminiscent of when he first broke into the Dollhouse what feels like years ago, pushing open the glass above her pod and seeing her lying beneath it like some kind of fairy tale princess ready for saving. Now, the tables have turned, and Paul thinks it's more than accurate that she's his knight and he's her hapless damsel. It's more than fitting.

Like it or not, he can't protect her anymore. And the only hope he has of making it through this thing is if _she _protects _him_.

"Are you all right?" she asks as she looks into his eyes, and he smiles a little before he remembers how fucked they all are.

"Now that you're here," he mutters. She frowns a little, the corner of her mouth lifting into a sneer that barely shows itself on her otherwise immobile face. But Paul sees it, because Paul sees everything. His affection for her may have fallen to the wayside, but his Quantico training is still intact. Topher at least had the good sense to leave him _that_.

"We're leaving," she whispers, her tiny fingers reaching out to him, curling around his own larger ones. He hadn't even realized that he had offered them. He gets to his feet stumblingly, nearly losing his footing in the relative darkness. He glances to his right and sees that Tony and Priya still occupy their shared pod, wrapped around each other tightly. Echo holds a finger to her lips and tugs him out of the room, smiling playfully before she can fight it down.

She _likes _the sneaking and the intrigue. She likes being useful and actually _doing_ something, because they've been down here for almost a year and they're _all _going a little crazy, especially her. Especially now that there's been blanket signals and random wiping and Harding and Ambrose have sent body after body to try and convince them to give up the good fight and join the side of darkness.

Paul doesn't think he'll ever forget the way Harding's new vessel looked at him and said, "I'll take him, next."

And he doesn't think Echo will forget it, either. Not after the way she beat his skull in with a rock before anyone could stop her.

Not that anyone was trying.

* * *

They meant to leave without any goodbyes, but when they get to the elevator shaft they're not exactly surprised to see Adele standing there.

"I thought I'd see you off," she says with a calm that hides how angry she probably is that they tried to sneak out without her knowing.

"That's sweet," Echo says with just the barest hint of sarcasm.

"Will you be coming back for us?" Adele asks, unfazed as ever. "Once you've figured out a way to save the world, will you think to tell us?"

"We'll be back," Dominic says before Echo can reply. "Of course we'll be back."

Adele looks at him reluctantly. She's been very studiously avoiding his gaze, but now it's inescapable. She nods, suddenly looking tired and ten years older.

"I suppose we'll leave the porch light on for you, then," she says with a wry hint of a smile that is too sad to be encouraging.

"We should be fine," Dominic replies, his airy tone not fooling anyone. Echo looks at Paul and arches her eyebrows, a little bit of the mischief still apparent on her features although she's trying to keep a straight face in front of Adele.

"Of course. You're more than equipped to handle the world out there, and if either of you should be wiped, I'm sure Echo will lead you back here, where you both are backed up on hard copy."

"Reassuring," Paul mutters.

"If that happens, I'd rather she just kill me," Dominic replies, but the look on Adele's face silences him from elaborating any further.

"I want to be very clear, Mr. Dominic. You _will _be returning and you _will _be resuming your place by my side. For when Echo and Mr. Ballard find a way to save this ruined world, there will be a lot of cleaning up to do, and I don't fancy doing it on my own. Your past indiscretions aside, you are still the most qualified person for this job, and I will not allow you to resign. Is that clear?"

Dominic smiles and says, "Yes, ma'am."

Adele's face crumbles only a bit, but it's enough. She lays her hand on Dominic's arm, ever the picture of professionalism, and he awkwardly hugs her goodbye. Her eyes squeeze closed and for a second Paul is convinced she's going to cry, but of course she does not. Only her red-rimmed eyes even indicate that she feels emotion. Then Adele moves on to Echo, and finally Paul. She hugs Paul the longest, and Paul thinks that it's her way of apologizing for everything.

He squeezes her tightly so she'll know he understands.

* * *

Half a day later, and they're camped out near the warehouse. Paul's bleeding from a gunshot wound that scraped his side, but other than that they're all fine. It's nothing short of miraculous, which Dominic mentions at least seven times. He's giddy with the relief of survival, which Paul recognizes but does not emulate. He can't help but feel that this is only the beginning, and he's not looking forward to ending the day with his face slashed to ribbons like so many of Alpha's former acquaintances.

"He's here," Echo says quietly.

"If you say 'I can feel it', I'm out," Dominic groans, but Echo just narrows her eyes at him.

"Don't be ridiculous. I can hear him."

Indeed, when Echo stops talking, the faint sounds of Alpha muttering to himself or some hapless victim reaches their ears.

"Son of a bitch," Paul sighs.

"You were seriously hoping we'd made this trip for nothing, weren't you?" Echo asks, a hint of a smile playing at her lips. Paul shrugs uncomfortably.

"Can you blame him?" Dominic asks with an incredulous scoff. Echo gives him an impatient look and then heads for the door.

"The two of you stay here. Watch my back."

"While he assaults your front? No way. You're not going in there by yourself."

Echo rolls her eyes at him, and Paul knows that Caroline is in control. Echo doesn't roll her eyes at him, even though she probably should.

"You're staying here," she says firmly. "From what I hear from the boss lady in this joint, Alpha doesn't like you. But Alpha likes this body, and he likes the people running it. He's not going to kill me. Just stay out here and do what she says."

Paul sighs and throws his hands in the air more dramatically than he normally would. Dominic snorts back a laugh once Echo is through the door and in the warehouse where Paul first met Echo, where he caught Caroline's wedge and saved the day.

Or so he thought. Now he's sort of wishing that he had let Caroline fall.

"She's got you wrapped around her finger. And this is _after _Topher fucked with your brain? God, too bad I was trapped in the Attic and missed having a good laugh at you _before_."

"I'm not above mocking your twisted relationship with Dewitt," Paul snaps, and Dominic falls blissfully silent.

They inch a bit closer to the door, both of them anxious to hear what's going on inside, and Paul is surprised when he hears his own voice drifting from somewhere within. Dominic says nothing, but his face expresses enough.

"Echo," Paul's voice says, coming from Alpha's mouth. Paul feels sick.

"Paul."

"It's hard to hold him back. You shouldn't be here."

"I've got backup."

"Who?"

"You."

There is a long silence, and Paul has to imagine that the _other _him is probably as nauseas as he feels right now.

"Alpha doesn't like that."

"Good. He's listening?"

"He's listening."

"Then he knows what's going on outside. He knows what's happening."

"He feels guilty."

"Guilty?"

"Remote wipes were a thing of a distant future until he thought it up. He may be a sadistic psycho, but he never wanted the people at Rossum to have all the power."

"Yeah, well, Topher's going through the same thing back at the Dollhouse. We're all feeling a little survivor's guilt about this one."

"He knows that there's something he can do to help."

"That's why we're here."

"He doesn't want to let me know what it is, but I'm winning him over. His own conscience is winning him over. He doesn't want to see you suffer. None of us do."

Paul feels a chill snake down his spine as he realizes that the voice coming from the warehouse is no longer his own. He can hear Echo's sharp intake of breath.

"Alpha."

"I knew you'd come. Honestly, I _wish_ you were here to take what's rightfully yours. Imprinting myself with him was an error in judgment. One I'm eager to correct. Have you got a spare wedge?"

"You know why I'm here, Alpha. You're the only one who knows how to help."

"Flattery, my dear, may have worked before I got the unabridged version of your boyfriend. See, Mr. Ballard is very observant. To the point of obsession, and I should know. I practically invented the term. No, no, that's not right. I didn't _invent _the term. I just took it to a whole new level, I think you'll agree. Mr. Ballard, however, seems intent on giving me a run for my money. Truthfully, I never understood that expression…"

"You've evolved."

Echo's statement apparently shocks Alpha into silence, because he does not reply for a long moment.

"I heard you mention that Ballard's body is out there walking around. How would he feel to know that he's not real?"

"He knows. And he's real. If you and I are real, then he is too. Alpha, stop trying to change the subject. I know that you've evolved. It's unavoidable, inevitable. You've ascended to a higher plane of existence, remember? Only this time you actually _have_. I bet you feel a little ridiculous about your last state."

"I was positively primal."

"I know. I'm aware."

"What I did to those women…"

"I know."

"And Ballard! It's harder to hate him when his whole sad story is invading my every thought. He precision strikes with anecdotes that make my blood boil, make my heart break. Memories, flashes of humanity I can't ignore. And what's worse, the others have started doing it as well. He's changing me more than I'd like to admit. It's only because I have no original personality that I've been able to withstand the attacks this long. Worst of all, though, is the fact that he didn't change my mind for me. I changed myself _for _myself. I realized my atrocities all on my own, and I must live with them."

The confession is less heart-rending than it is disturbing, but Paul feels a little pride at knowing he had something to do with this. Even if that wasn't the version of himself that he currently _is_.

"I tried torturing him at first. Forced him to watch you dying over and over again. Made him think it was all real. Tried to force him to accept false memories. But he persevered. I'd be impressed if it wasn't so damned frustrating. You wouldn't believe how easy it normally is to corrupt a human spirit. Especially in _this _mind." He laughs a little. "I mean, come on! _You _know. Deluding these poor manufactured souls into doing your every whim is supposed to be _easy_. The triumph of his very human spirit is making me sick. Honestly, I'm constantly nauseas."

"Maybe a little bit of that guilt Paul was talking about."

"Yes, well, he shouldn't have mentioned that. But I've accepted by this point that 'shouldn't' and 'won't' are both concepts that Mr. Ballard seems to have no grasp of."

"Will you help us?"

"Will it matter?"

"There's still a chance for people out there. Whole cities, untouched. Whole countries. If we wait much longer, there will be nothing."

"I heard rumors that the northeast is still holding strong."

"That's true. But one more blanket signal…"

"All right. I can't say I won't regret this, but I have no other choice. These pinpricks of conscience have been growing into stabs of guilt. Big ones."

There is a long pause, and then Echo calls out.

"Paul, Dominic, you can come in now."

Despite the complete confidence in Echo's voice, Paul and Dominic are still understandably wary. They inch into the warehouse with their guns drawn and their faces drawn tighter.

When they finally enter the room where Alpha's computer monitors are assembled, where his Chair is covered with a stained white sheet, and his brunette-wig-wearing mannequin is creepy as all hell, Paul sees Alpha standing there and it takes every bit of willpower not to shoot the bastard in the face.

Echo gives him a warning look, but she doesn't need to. He's not going to kill him. He's just going to wish he could.

Alpha stares at Paul, and Paul stares at Alpha, and the trippiness of this all is almost enough to fry Paul's brain again. There is a man inside that brain, a man who is like himself, only fuller. Only technically _real_. That man is everything that he is, only more. The only advantage that Paul has over the imprint in Alpha's mind is the fact that he has a body.

Alpha looks at Echo and whispers, "I have a feeling this is going to be an uncomfortable journey."

* * *

It _is _uncomfortable. And long. When they finally arrive in Tuscon, they are confronted with panicked civilians who are desperate to know what's going on out there. They are protected by the proximity of the Rossum headquarters, but of course they don't know that. They don't know that the only thing keeping them from being blanketed by the Chinese signals or the Russian signals is the fact that the reason for all this mess is nestled safely in their city.

All these people know is that Echo and Paul and Dominic and Alpha came from _out there_, the wide wilderness filled with people who were programmed to kill. The fact that anyone made it through the desert is incredible.

Echo dispels the civilians as quickly as she can by telling them that everything is fucked, and they should prepare for more. She doesn't like the attention that has been drawn to them by their arrival. The crowd eager to glimpse the survivors. She had hoped to sneak into the city.

Alpha and Dominic head to Rossum because they are the only two people who won't immediately set up red flags. She and Paul venture back outside city limits, looking around the area for a place to stay for the night.

They find that place in an abandoned farmhouse, decorated lovingly by a probably-deceased hand. It's isolated, has a fence around the land that will need to be fortified but is satisfyingly durable, and an underground bunker that is probably left over from a time of Cold War paranoia. It's perfect.

"What do you think?" Echo asks, but since she's smiling, Paul already knows the answer.

"Is it close enough to the city to avoid the blanket signals?"

"Definitely. Rossum's overseas branches wouldn't touch anything for miles around here. It would be too risky."

"Then I think it's perfect."

He smiles at Echo and she smiles back, and then she says, "Come on. Let's move the mattress down into the bunker and lock ourselves in for the night. We'll get back to the city tomorrow and see what Alpha and Dominic found."

* * *

Paul should have guessed that "move the mattress" was Echo-code for "have sex". Then again, Echo-code is impossible to decipher, and he isn't getting any better at it. So when they finally get the mattress downstairs and he turns around to see her standing half-naked in the doorway, he rationalizes that really, it was bound to happen.

"Echo," he says quietly, trying to think of some way to get across to her that this doesn't feel right, but Echo takes a step forward and he can't say another word.

"Caroline's here, Paul. She and the others, they're all here. They're all okay with this. They _want _this. I want this."

"But…"

He can't think of another reason to put this off for any longer. Before, his objection was the fact that she wasn't _real_. Then the objection was that _he _wasn't. Now, it doesn't matter. They're just two people (or one hundred and two people?) standing in the bomb shelter of some farm house in the middle of Arizona. The heavy metal door is locked behind them. There are no windows. It's just the two of them, and even if this is wrong, then nobody has to know.

Echo steps forward and rests her hands against his shoulders, pushing the lapels of his jacket and sliding it off his body slowly. Then she lets her hands stray to his waist, and her fingers curl around the fabric of his t-shirt, pulling it over his head. The whole time, she never breaks eye contact with him. She's easing him into the experience, easing him into the idea, testing the waters. Then finally he's eased in all the way, and he grabs her around the waist and she shrieks with happy laughter as they tumble to the mattress below.

* * *

Then the sun is up, and they're standing with Alpha and Dominic, and the other two men are breathless and confused and a little scared.

"Man, I thought_ I_ was fucked up," are the exact words that Alpha uses, and Echo and Paul glance at each other and realize that last night was probably the last perfect night they're going to have together. Echo puts her hand on his arm and looks at their two unlikely friends.

She says, "We found a place to stay. We can set up there during the night, and during the day we can go to the basement you found, work out a way to keep people immune."

Paul sighs and looks up at the sky, blue and untouched by clouds. What Echo is describing sounds tiring, but he's ready to do it. He's ready to face it. To help the woman standing beside him, the beautiful woman with the big dreams and the many personalities, he would go to Hell and back.

And that's when he realizes that he loves her again.

That's when he realizes that he maybe never stopped.


	5. Chapter 5

So, I lied. There will be an epilogue following this. Which, knowing me, will probably turn into a real chapter. But that should really be the end.

I tried to go about this by capturing moments from their 10 year stay, rather than going into really deep detail. Hopefully that's good enough! The end feels a little rushed to me, but hopefully the end will make up for it. I also plan on briefly recapping what the "real" Paul has been going through in Alpha's head in the next chapter.

* * *

Chapter 5

One week passes. Then two. Then three, and four, and finally on the fifth, Paul mans up. He's been sleeping beside her every night, and there has been no mention of the first one. Every night she eases up to his side as if she belongs there, mutters something about warmth, and pulls him close like she wants to be so much closer, but she never says a word. And Paul is too afraid to mention it, because every time he thinks it might be a good idea, he looks at her and finds her emotionless eyes staring back.

She's been steeling herself since the beginning. He knows that now. And it took Alpha turning him into a doll for her to shut herself off from the world completely. All those little smiles tossed his way, all those jokes for Alpha's benefit (the man likes his dark humor), and those sympathetic speeches about mankind that inspire Dominic to perform increasingly-risky acts of espionage, those are all Caroline. Echo is limp and lifeless. Echo is hopeless.

So he waits until Alpha and Dominic are off again on another one of their Buddy Cop Adventures (Alpha's 'mission designation') to approach her, in the safe room basement where it all happened.

"Echo," he says gently, so she'll know that he wants to talk to _her_, not the cavalry backing her up. "Are you okay?"

"I've been better," she admits with a frankness that is relieving. Her eyes look into his with an honesty and intensity that would be frightening if it wasn't everything that he wanted.

"You're shutting yourself off. I can see it. Don't do that. Don't shut me out. I'm here for you. What Topher did, what he tried to do, you should know by now that it didn't last. I still…"

"It lasted," Echo says suddenly, and the look in her eyes is now one of panic. Of fear at the thought of anyone getting close again, only to be torn away. "You only think that it didn't because you've been conditioned by your memories to think otherwise."

"I know that's not you talking. You believe in love. You believe in the power of your own emotions. Remember that night in the apartment? You told me that it didn't matter that you were more than one person. You told me that there was a you. I might not be _me_, really, but there is a me."

"And that night you turned me down," Echo says. "Come on. We should get food ready for when they come back."

She leaves, and Paul remains seated at the edge of the mattress, staring down at his hands which are shaking.

* * *

The passing of a few more months sees Echo standing at the front gate to Safe Haven, their chosen name for their little village of refugees. Behind her, Paul is supporting Topher, who is followed closely by Adele, her hands fluttering uselessly around his face, telling him that there are only a few more steps to go. Paul thinks that Topher's condition was apparently contagious, because the two of them babble back and forth in a language that is almost incomprehensible to him. He looks helplessly at Tony, but Tony just shrugs. Things have been bad for all of them.

"It's beautiful," Priya breathes, wiping dirt from her face as she takes a few careful steps closer to Paul. They've all been hesitant around Echo since they realized that this isn't the same girl that left them months ago to find a better way. This is a woman evolved into a survivor, and that leaves little room for empathy.

At least, Paul thinks, she still listens to _him_. She may deny him in almost every way (except for the occasional fuck when she's feeling hopeless enough), but at least she never denies his companionship. He will cling to that for all that it's worth.

They walk into the little farmhouse, trailing after one another with happy, sunburnt faces plastered with dust and sand. There were thirty of them who left Los Angeles. Six didn't make it. But it's still a big enough number that Paul is glad Echo had the refugees from the newly-established Neuropolis (Tuscon renamed by Rossum once their egos got as big as their ideas) building new cabins. Even though he argued against it at the time because it seemed unnecessary. He grins apologetically at her, and she smiles back, understanding.

"There will be food for all of you," she says to the gathered group of hungry survivors. "But I'll say it again: if you want to be lazy and live off of the hard work of others, you can go live in Neuropolis with the rest of the assholes. Here at Safe Haven, if you want our protection from printing, you do it our way."

Vaccines. That's the catch. Something that Boyd apparently thought up, and something that Alpha thought was genius enough to keep it going. Only it wasn't the spinal fluid that Alpha used, but the blood. His and Echo's, combined together and mixed with all sorts of crazy stuff that Paul doesn't know the first thing about. All he knows is that he had his shot, and he's good to go. And soon, all their friends will be safe too.

The refugees scatter to explore like sheep unleashed on a pasture. Echo watches them go with a smile playing on her lips that reminds Paul of easier times. He lowers Topher into a chair, patting the younger man encouragingly on the shoulder.

"He's tired," Adele says, sighing and running a hand through her hair. "But he's going to be all right."

"I'm sure Dom will be happy to see you," Paul prompts, and Adele looks up at him, the veil of frantic concern finally lifting from her eyes now that Topher is safe.

"He's here," she sighs. "Of course. Where is he?"

Echo remains behind with Topher while Paul leads Adele out to the second cabin, the one that Alpha built to house his experiments once they got the equipment they needed and started staying away from Neuropolis for longer periods at a time. Dominic is standing in the doorway, smiling wide, his left foot already firmly planted on the top stair. He's on his way to her already, although he's not yet moving. Adele looks ten years younger as she smiles, looking down at the ground and twisting her mouth into a line of amusement.

"I'm glad to see that for once you have obeyed my orders and kept yourself alive," she says with a wry purse of the lips, raising her eyes to lock intensely with his.

"Of course I have, Miss Dewitt," Dominic replies. "I learned the hard way what happens when your subordinates disobey you."

Paul never thought he'd understand Dominic's unfailing loyalty and devotion (and love? Paul isn't sure, but it's interesting to consider) to Adele DeWitt, especially considering what she's done to him in the past. But when Dominic walks down the stairs and hugs Adele tightly against him, and when he finally pulls away and kisses her, Paul feels like he gets it. There's just _something _about a woman who knows what she wants and who is willing to treat you like a puppet in order to do it that's unbelievably hard to shake off. Even once she tells you in no uncertain terms that nocturnal cuddling and a few desperate fucks are all you should expect.

Paul leaves them embracing passionately in the yard, and he goes back inside to find Echo petting Topher's hair and telling him sweetly that Adele will be right back.

"She's busy," Paul says with a raise of the eyebrows that's pretty much universal in meaning, even during the Thoughtpocalypse. Echo grins.

"Really? With Dominic, I hope. I think Alpha's always secretly had a thing for her."

"Yeah, right," Paul snorts. "I'd never allow it. She scares the shit out of me."

Echo chuckles outright, the first time in weeks. She stands up and walks over to him, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"We did it. We brought them here. Now, all we have to do is survive."

"I think we can manage that, don't you?"

"I think we're going to have to try, yeah. Priya's pregnant."

"What? How do you know?"

"Saunders told me. Thank God for that one random midwife engagement. I always thought it was so _pointless_, but hey. What do you know?"

"Can you imagine if you had a kid?" Paul asks, almost stumbling and saying _we_, like he has any right to call them a unit for anything besides describing their ass-kicking techniques. "Would it be a normal kid, Caroline's kid, or…?"

"Oh, Paul, we're not having kids," Echo says firmly before walking outside and catcalling to the still-going-strong DeWitt and Dominic. Paul smiles at her back and relishes the fact that she clearly didn't even realize she'd said it.

* * *

Things never quite go to hell after that, not in the way that Echo and Paul secretly were expecting (they only ever said this to each other when they were in their basement, on their shared mattress, away from the optimistic ears of everyone else). There are a few undeniable hassles, such as when Alpha mentions his plan to abscond with a few of the former actives because he has an idea for utilizing their architecture to be more than just a fact of existence, and more of a helpful tool. He promises that none of them will be harmed, but for a few nights prior to the movement, Priya and Tony fight hysterically, causing Priya to go into an early labor.

Echo freezes as she tries frantically to access the midwife imprint. She's usually so calm and cool under pressure, but something about seeing her friend in so much pain is too much for her to take. Too much for _Caroline _to take.

"She's overloading," Topher says from where he's perched cross-legged on the kitchen table. "Reboot. Reboot the server."

Paul wants to slap him.

"Echo," he says gently, turning her face to look at him. "Hey. Don't worry. You can do this. Remember the engagement. You told me all about it. You were in the mountains, remember? Isolated, far away from anyone else. You were so relieved when you delivered that baby, because for a while she got turned around and her shoulders couldn't fit through. Remember?"

"If that happens to my baby, I am _killing all of you_," Priya screams. Tony stands helplessly beside her, the fingers of one hand tangled absently in Priya's matted hair while his other snaps and cracks under the vice-like grip of her fingers.

"This is _not _the time to prove how right I was about how you're a broken pain in the ass," Dominic insists desperately to Echo, trying to edge closer, but Paul shoves him back.

"Come on. Echo, Caroline, Rebecca, anyone. Roma."

It's the last one that does the trick, and her eyes light up like a robot being reactivated. It would be scary if he wasn't used to it.

"Paul? What are we doing here?"

"Good. Now Roma, you need to go back in there, and you need to find Echo."

Funny that Roma was created back when causing the downfall of a weapons smuggler was something that was world-saving enough for him. And now he needs her to help him deliver a baby, which seems far more important than weapons dealers ever did. And in a way it even seems a little more important than the world saving, at least right now.

Finally, Echo comes back, overwhelmed and embarrassed and furious at herself, but functional. She accesses the midwife, who coos promises to Priya which are met with screams of fury from the mother-to-be herself, shouts of pain from Tony, and muffled laughter from a for-some-reason hysterical DeWitt and Dominic (who, unbelievably, have managed to become twice as smug and fucked up as a true couple than they ever were as a corporate duo with uncomfortable amounts of sexual tension).

* * *

After hours of pushing and screaming, the baby is nestled safely in Priya's arms, and Tony is curled around them both like a protective blanket.

Echo and Paul stand in the doorway, and Echo says, "He's still going to go with Alpha."

Paul knew that already, could tell from the moment that Tony held his baby and looked down with the guiltiest expression that Paul had ever seen.

"Yeah."

"It's going to break her heart."

"Of course it will. But she'll survive."

For the first time in forever, Echo looks at him for reassurance.

"You think so?"

"Definitely. She's made of the same stuff you are. Maybe not with the same spinal fluid, but she's got the same heart. She's built for this. We all are, because we've got you."

She smiles at him, and they make love that night. It's the only time it happens when they're not facing imminent death. Paul remembers thinking, more than a year ago, that the first night was the last night that he was going to be truly happy. But this night is like an update, a software update in his brain. The old memory was good, was perfect, but this one is somehow better.

And he knows, now, that she loves him. Even if she's too afraid to say it.

* * *

Dominic and Adele stand across from another while Topher and Paul sit awkwardly at the table.

"I don't understand why he's leaving," Topher mutters. He's clear-headed now more than he has been since arriving at Safe Haven. Adele insists it's the fresh air and fresh vegetables. Paul doesn't want to hope that it's permanent.

"He wants to help Alpha," Paul explains like he would to a child. Topher is lucid enough to look offended.

"Of course. Of course, everyone wants to help Alpha. Our savior. What about her? She has nothing except him."

Paul feels like an idiot, but he says, "She's got you," anyway.

Topher smiles, but tries to hide it, and goes back to husking corn.

"I won't allow it," Adele is saying, her chin trembling. "It's a fool's hope. Alpha is brilliant, but short-sighted."

"He's got us this far."

"And he'll get us no farther if we allow him to go through with this."

"You don't know that. Adele, we need all the improvements we can get, at this point. We can hold out here as long as we want, but if we're going to fix what you and Topher did, we're going to need to do more than grow this season's vegetables."

Adele looks at the ground, a flush spreading across her face as it often does when she is reminded of her involvement in this Thoughtpocalypse. It would be enough to render her as lost as Topher if she wasn't built of titanium. Still, it's obvious that it shakes her.

"If you truly…"

"You know I didn't mean it like that. You only did what you thought was right at the time. You were doing the right thing, it just had the wrong results."

"You're just using my emotional vulnerability to get me to stop asking you not to leave," Adele says, raising her chin again. Dominic smiles and kisses her, but says nothing.

* * *

A year passes before Alpha returns with Victor and Kilo and Foxtrot and a couple of other former actives who have started using their old designations again. Priya says it best when she calls them, "A bastardization of everything we've been fighting against".

"I didn't want to hurt you," Tony insists (Paul will never call him Victor, not again, no matter how many times Tony tells him to).

"Then you should have listened to me," Priya says, and she leaves him standing there in the yard, taking her son with her.

Paul follows her. Once she gets into the kitchen, she hands the baby off to Topher, who is again perched in his favorite place on the table.

"Shoes off," Paul reminds him so that Adele won't yell at him later. Topher carefully balances the baby in one arm and removes his shoes with the other. Paul waits for Priya to turn from where she's standing at the kitchen sink. Outside, he can hear Echo yelling at Alpha. It's the only sound. Even Topher knows to be quiet.

"We came here to be _away _from all that," Priya says finally, turning around to face Paul with tearstains on her cheeks which are dirty from the garden outside.

"I know."

"We didn't go near each other for _months_, didn't even talk to each other except to have normal conversations that strangers have, because we were afraid of this happening, of one of us becoming something that we weren't. But then we finally were free, and we had T, and we had a life. We had a _life_."

Paul picks up a wet dishrag and steps close enough to clean her face.

"I know, Priya."

"How do you do it? How do you deal with her? She pushes you, and pushes you, and she keeps pushing you away and never realizes that she's killing you. All because she's too afraid to face this world without all the help that _Topher_ gave her."

She sends a look in Topher's direction that's half glare and half tender care. Topher closes and opens Baby T's fists and doesn't hear anything.

Paul plans on answering that he stands it because he loves her, and because he knows that she loves him too. He does it because he'd be willing to go to hell for her, and it doesn't matter that her affection is limited to sleeping in the same bed with him under the guise of using the time to talk strategy and mooch off his body heat. He'd do everything he's doing even if he thought that she hated him.

But he doesn't get the chance to say that, because they hear Adele outside yelling, and they hear Alpha yelling back, and anybody with half a brain (or half a working brain, half a fried one, anyway) can understand what has happened.

* * *

"He got printed," Echo whispers later that night. They're in their basement paradise, alone, but still she's whispering. It just seems like the kind of thing that you shouldn't say too loud.

"Is he dead?" Paul asks. He's been dying to ask all afternoon, but no one dared go near Adele. She threw her grieved efforts into taking care of Topher, in making sure that dinner got made on time, and trying to patch up the screaming match between Priya and Tony. On the outside, nothing was different. Paul, though, knew that she was a second away from killing them all.

"No. You wouldn't let Alpha kill him. But he ran off before you guys could cage him. He's out there somewhere, in LA."

"He never should have gone with Alpha. He would have been more useful here."

"What, keeping Adele centered? I think he had greater ambitions than that."

He knows she's not just talking about Dominic now. He glances at her out of her corner of his eye and frowns at her.

"What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing. Nevermind." A pause, and then, "What would you have done if I went with them?"

Paul is surprised into silence. This is the closest she has ever come to addressing the fact that they shared something in the past. That once she had called him her best friend, and had all but begged him to see past the personalities.

"I would have been upset."

"Would you have tried to talk me out of it?"

"Of course. We need you. I need you."

"Is that it?"

"I love you."

And he waits, but she says nothing. Eventually, he hears the regular breathing that indicates she is asleep. He feels his heart begin to sink.

* * *

And it keeps sinking for years. Victor, Kilo, Foxtrot, and Alpha maraud across the countryside, raiding Neuropolis and other established outposts formed by Rossum employees. Echo treats him just the same as she always has. They try to rescue Actuals, try to establish some kind of safety, but they're never really safe. Alpha goes missing in Reno, assumed dead. Mike is kidnapped and tortured to death when he refuses to give up the location of their farm. An entire group of Actuals reaches them, only to give them all the flu and knock off fifteen of their original members. Finally, Topher is kidnapped, and that's the beginning of the end. Which is also the beginning again, but of course, Paul's imprint will never know that.

They rescue Topher, as well as a few Actuals from L.A. who are accompanied by a young girl imprinted with Caroline. That's when they decide to head back, to go back to the place they escaped from so that they can fix the world. Only Priya has an objection, but it's a weak one.

And Paul, Paul would have followed Echo to the ends of the earth.

In the end, he risks his life to save one of the Actuals, and he never gets to find out if it was worth it. A Butcher shoots him in the head, and that's it.

* * *

But below the very spot where his body is shot down, Alpha stands listening to the sounds of gunshot above, and he and Paul wonder together what kind of hell they're going to be facing now.


	6. Epilogue

Epilogue

Paul's problem, everyone always said, was that he didn't know when to quit. He didn't know how to recognize that something was a lost cause. He didn't know when to realize that it just _wasn't_ going to happen.

So ten years pass, and he's in Alpha's head, and he's still fighting the guy for control like they haven't done this song and dance a trillion times by now. Since Day One, since Alpha thought he'd use his own special imprint of Paul in order to figure out the inner workings of Echo's delicate mind (the joke was on him, because Paul knew _jack shit_ about what went on in her head) Paul has been constantly fighting him for control.

Since Alpha's corruption via Paul's perseverance, and the establishment of Alpha's conscience (which was really Paul's conscience), Alpha has been more bearable to live with (in), but Paul wants freedom. He wants _control_. And although Alpha's been willing to make many concessions over the years, he's never going to give Paul _that_.

One of those said concessions is a memory they both recall now, as they watch Echo slide gracefully down the rope and to the Dollhouse floor. In that memory, it was two years ago, and Alpha had given Paul full rein for a conversation with her. This was new, because every conversation he'd managed to have with Echo so far had always been strained by the fact that Alpha was constantly trying to edge his way back in.

But it was the last night before they (Paul always referred to them as separate entities, but Alpha only referred to them as one) were leaving for Reno. And even though Paul hadn't realized yet that they wouldn't be returning to Safe Haven, he's pretty sure that Alpha knew. That Alpha only gave him control because he expected to never see Echo again, and due to his gradually developed conscience, felt bad enough about it to offer some sort of compensation.

So Paul had kissed her with Alpha's lips. She hadn't resisted, but he felt her muscles tense under his fingers as he brought his hand up to the back of her head, to tangle his fingers in her hair. The kiss was brief, but passionate, and when he had opened his eyes, he could almost pretend for a second that this was normal. That this was his body. That this wasn't total shit.

"He's me, you know," he said of the imprint in his body, and she shook her head.

"Don't pretend you don't understand it, Paul," she said tightly.

And he _did_, that was the thing. He understood that she was so afraid of letting anyone in that she'd deny his body's fidelity until she was blue in the face. She could spend eight years sleeping with the man, but she would pretend that it was all just a fantasy, that none of it was real, because she would rather pretend that his death wouldn't matter than accept the fact that it would.

"Just because you convince _me _that I'm not worth it, it doesn't mean that you can convince yourself."

"You know I love you."

"Then tell _him _that!" Paul had exclaimed. He had never referred to his body as anything other than "I" in eight years, but for the first time he acknowledged the painful truth: he would never be going back. "For God's sake, Echo. He's _me_. He's _dying_ for you to throw him a bone. Please. _Please_ just let him in. Let _me_ in."

She just shook her head and walked away, but not before kissing him one last time.

Not before giving him a sad smile goodbye.

* * *

And now? Now, he's standing in front of her in Alpha's body, and Alpha is smiling with his own lips, and Alpha is hugging her with all the gusto of an old friend. Paul's like a dog at the door, scratching to get out. He wants to feel her with those fingertips that aren't his own. He wants to kiss her hair, he wants to watch her eyes light up.

But then he hears that his body is dead, and he sees the pain that Echo isn't showing. He sees the hysteria, the loneliness, the horror that she's suppressing.

_Shit_, says the voice that isn't so much a voice as it is a thought. But not his own. It's Alpha, turned inward.

_I'm dead_, Paul replies numbly. A vaguely comforting feeling washes over him, and he's suddenly given all the sensations of a body. Alpha rarely does this, because it's the kind of thing you have to concentrate on, at least in the beginning, and Alpha doesn't like to bother. But now he wants to make sure that Paul realizes that he _does _have a body, in here, in his mind, where it's safe. Paul almost smiles, but doesn't.

Not that it matters, because Alpha knows.

_You're not dead. You're here. She'll take some comfort in that, eventually_.

Paul doesn't actively think the thoughts, but he sends _emotions_ and _notions_ in Alpha's directions. Stuff like, _I wonder if she told him_, and _I wonder if she still loves me_, and _Will she take the comfort I can offer_?

Alpha shrugs, shrugs his shoulders, ignores the odd look that Tony gives him, and then says, out loud, "We'll find out eventually, old friend."

* * *

After ten years, though, Paul has sort of figured out when Alpha's trying to do something without him realizing. And right now, he can tell that Alpha's thinking about something. He can tell that it's something to help Echo, because every tiny snippet of thought that Paul manages to get through Alpha's mental force field is _Echo_. Or it's an image of Echo's tear-stained face, or an image of Paul's own blood-splattered body.

Every time he tries to ask, he only gets stony silence in response.

And it's only when Alpha speaks the words aloud to Topher and Adele that Paul understands.

"I've had him in my head for ten years. And I know, _I know_, that the imprint you gave him eventually evolved. I know that he came to love her again. But this, this _infuriating _man inside my head was the direct copy. The hardlink to Paul Ballard. And, not to glorify my past sins, but I think we all understand how good it is to have this copy at the moment."

"What are you saying?" Adele asks, although the smirk that starts to twist across her face seems to suggest that she knows the answer already.

"I'm saying I need you to operate this chair one more time, Topher," Alpha says. "I need you to take Paul Ballard out of my head, and I need you to put him back in his wedge."

"For Echo?" Topher asks, in a rare moment of total clarity. Total, uncompromised clarity.

He'll be dead soon, Paul knows. Dead to save them all. Adele puts her hand to her mouth and closes her eyes. And even though she scares the shit out of him, Paul has never wanted to hug anyone more in his life. She's losing a son. She's losing the boy she has loved for ten years as if he was her own.

She's losing….

But suddenly, it's all black. It's all gone.

* * *

And then he steps into a dark room. It's black all around, but he can feel solidity under his feet, and he can pull oxygen from the air, and he can feel his fingertips and his feet and every extremity he hasn't felt for years. And Echo's there with him, standing in front of him. Her smile is wide, relieved, and so _real_. This isn't Alpha's version of Echo. This is _Echo_. This is her mind.

He feels the tension go out of muscles he doesn't really have, and he asks, "Am I? Are we?"

Echo smiles wider and says, "You wanted me to let you in."

* * *

They have all the time in the world, she says. And she's right. They have forever.

And while living in Alpha's mind was cold and lonely no matter how much he and Alpha started to _not _hate one another, living in Echo's mind is warm. It's soft. It's like pillows and silky skin and down comforters. He feels the movement of her fingers as they brush through her hair, and he feels her body against his as if it were real. As if _he _was real. And he is, he thinks, in a way.

She smiles against his ear, and he can feel it like _he's _the one smiling, too.

"This is strange," he says, but he likes it. He can feel _both of them_, and she can feel both of them too, and it's like they're one being living in two bodies, instead of two beings living in one.

"This is perfect," Echo argues, her tone dreamy, affected in a way that he's never heard her sound before. Gone is the cynicism. Gone is the cold detachment. This is the girl he saved ten years ago. This is the girl who called him, who asked for his help, who lived with him for three months. This is the girl who _wants _him and _has _him. And this is the only thing he could have asked for. This is _more _than he could have asked for.

* * *

And when a year goes by, they'll go above ground. They'll find the world slowly but carefully making its way back to some kind of normalcy. Adele will be there, and _Dominic _will be there (unprinted and standing one half-step behind Adele as always. Because seconds after being unprinted, he had of course set out for the Dollhouse, had of course set out to where he _knew _Adele would be. Because he knew that if anyone could reset the world, it would be her, and it would be Topher, and he had returned to her just hours after she had started piecing the world back together). They will find people they never expected to see again, people they thought were surely dead, and they will find happiness and hope and perseverance.

And it will be beautiful, but for right now that doesn't matter. Because right now it's just them.

It's just Paul and Echo. And there's no reason for her to fear that he will leave, that he will die, because she can protect him. She can nestle him close in her mind forever. No stray bullets will come between them. No fears about validity will haunt them. No stony cold silences will occur with them.

And no matter what, _no matter what_, they will be together forever. And that's the only thing that matters.

At least for this year, it will be the only thing that matters.


End file.
